Natyarangam’s Rithu Bharatham celebrates six seasons through dance

Exploring the essence of seasons through dance

Every year between August and September, Natyarangam, the dance wing of Narada Gana Sabha, presents its annual thematic dance festival, which brings together eminent personalities including musicians, dancers, and scholars on the same platform.

The festival offers young talented dancers an opportunity to perform, and allows them to conceptualise and create a full-length presentation on the chosen topic. Each year’s edition will have a different theme. This year’s festival, titled ‘Rithu Bharatham’, is themed on the six seasons.

The theme provided an opportunity for the artistes to unleash their imagination and explore the myriad facets of each season. But the committee’s guidelines to include a wide range of works — from Kalidasa’s to Sangam, and from Ragamala paintings to festivals — seemed difficult for the dancers to fully explore the essence of each season. A specific template, requiring the dancers to integrate their ideas, resulted in a similar pattern getting repeated on all days.

The festival began with Rama Vaidyanathan’s ‘Vasantha Rithu’ (Spring) performance. Rama had divided the season into five parts beginning with Saumya (season of Equanimity), Punaravarthana (Rejuvenation), Kama roopini (love), Bahu Varnani (multi-hued), and Apeksha (hope).

Her description of night and day effectively conveyed the difference in the time cycle associated with the season. She built up the visual imagery with an interesting soundscape to enhance the ideas — the scattering of seeds, to a rhythmic melody of tanam; use of swara passages to depict different flowers of the season; and culminating on the lotus flower, on which goddess Saraswathi stands. A detailed exploration, for the song ‘Saraswathi namosthuthe’, composed by G.N. Balaubramaniam in raga Saraswathi, followed

The entry and exit for the section showing Manmatha gliding on his vahana Parrot was gracefully presented. The descriptions of the cool breeze, swaying palms, birds, bees, peacocks and deer were a little overstretched, negating the mood. Various aspects such as Raas, the use of colours during Holi festival, and the portrayal of Vasantha Ritu as a newlywed were well-explored.

Soundscape was conceived in an interesting manner by S. Vasudevan, who used instruments such as ghatam, kanjira, and sitar, judiciously for the sequences, along with suitable ragas.